The Susquehanna Township School District’s teachers’ contracts will be up in less than a month. But the Susquehanna Township Education Association’s vice president says the school district has yet to sit down with the teachers’ union and negotiate.

Officials on either side have explained a rocky road of sorts hampered by scheduling issues, a heated email and an unwelcome chief negotiator.

A fact-finding hearing May 13 is the closest the school district and teachers’ union have come to negotiations, said Lorie DiClemente, vice president for the education association.

The education association approved the fact finder’s report. School board members May 28 voted against the fact finder’s recommendations after they saw salary increases as a sticking point, said district spokeswoman Susan Anthony.

“The primary concern which resulted in rejecting the recommendation was the salary recommendation of almost 3 percent per year,” Anthony said. “And the school board’s response is to say that that is unaffordable.”

The negotiations could come up as a topic at a community meeting 6:30 p.m. Monday meant to answer questions about the 2013-14 proposed budget, Anthony said. The meeting will be in the high school auditorium.

The road to fact-finding

DiClemente said the association initiated the fact-finding request with the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board to nudge the district into sitting down at the table with the union. During the hearing, the education association and district Solicitor Paul K. Blunt each presented their findings.

Many of the issues brought forth could have been settled if both sides had sat down face-to-face to have a conversation, DiClemente said.

Most of the teachers’ union contracts in the last 20 years have been “early birds” that wrapped up months before the old one was up, she said.

Blunt, in an email, pointed to the union as the reason for the delay. He said the union was refusing to meet if he or the district’s business manager was present. When the school board agreed to meet with the union, “wires got crossed and the union did not show.”

Blunt said the union sent a “threatening email” and were then told Blunt would be chief negotiator for the school district. That, he said, caused the union to cancel a meeting and request fact-finding.

DiClemente tells it a little differently. While the union wanted to meet to discuss negotiations, the school board wasn’t responding, she said. DiClemente said she would send four or five emails before getting a response.

While there were many attempts to set up meetings, Anthony said they were called off for one reason or another. But she could not speak to the email issue.

DiClemente said the union no-show that Blunt described occurred after she proposed a Feb. 27 meeting date to the school board. When no one responded to confirm the meeting, she assumed it wasn’t happening.

Things hit a tipping point after DiClemente received a letter from officials stating Business Manager Mike Frentz was on the district’s negotiating team. DiClemente emailed back, frustrated that the district’s negotiating team continued to change.

The union would not have had a problem meeting with Frentz. But when the district named Blunt as its chief negotiator, it refused and brought in Carolyn Funkhouser, a UniServ Representative through the Pennsylvania State Education Association, as its chief negotiator, DiClemente said. The union, as a result, called off an April 5 meeting because Funkhouser couldn’t make it.

DiClemente said the union sees Blunt’s role as chief negotiator as a conflict of interest since he was the union’s UniServ representative when it negotiated its last contract a few years ago.

“We feel very uncomfortable that he knows everything we’re going to argue, and was our defender three years ago and is now our prosecutor, basically,” she said.

When asked about his previous work with PSEA, Blunt stated in an email it was “not relevant.”

The union and school board have one more chance to vote on the fact-finder’s report. DiClemente said the union planned to vote on that Thursday night.

The school board’s initial rejection of the fact finder’s recommendation means the board hasn’t accepted that proposal for settling the contract with the education association, Blunt said.

“We will need to go back to negotiating to settle the contract with the teachers,” Blunt said.

If the two parties don’t reach an agreement by June 30 when the teachers’ contract expires, they will continue to operate under the terms of the old contract until they agree upon a new one, Blunt said.

Regarding the district’s financial concerns, DiClemente said the education association is willing to work with the district and talk about the proposed salary increases. Teachers understand that money is tight and people don’t want to pay more taxes, she said.

“We would be happy to help them if we could have a conversation about those financial concerns and come to some type of agreement face to face,” DiClemente said.

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